As soon as you publish an article you want to get as much as traffic as you can and social sharing comes at the top of the list… but is it really worth posting your URLs to these websites?
Today if you want to find something you go to Google, Bing, Digg, Technorati or any similar website because they have content and very likely the answer you are looking for too. These monstrous websites have millions or even billions of pages with articles, videos, images for anyone.
Naturally they have a lot of traffic you could be using to sell more, or at least to get more page views to your pages with advertisements.
On every website you visit you can see some shinning badges with SU, Digg, Reddit, Delicious symbols almost praying to be clicked so the article can get a little higher in the rank and in the hall of fame. Every writer or webmaster wants to rank higher in all the sites he can. Traffic and status feel like a bless.
The problem is: hundreds of millions of webmasters think the same thing and your article is going to fight in an unfair and very rudimentary battle, most of the times it’s not the best who wins. The winner is the article that can make the reader so happy that he or she will click on the button immediately.
Let’s see then if it’s better to submit your latest article to the networks or to start writing a new article.
I have been using some services that can post your URL to dozens of social websites at the same time. They are legal, they are legitimate, they are free, but most of all they do the job. One service is OnlyWire. This baby will spread your article like H1N1 spreads it’s own piece of genetic code. With that button on your browser or website, one click makes the server work so hard to deliver the message. Another one is Ping.fm. These two little monsters alone will put your message in at least 70 social networks.
The other ones you cannot post with these services are Digg and Reddit.
After sending almost all my article and images and URLs I had in many websites such as Triond, xredburn.com, Bukisa, Ezine Articles I must say:
1- 99% of the social bookmarking will send you just one visitor: zero visitors… too sad. I do now know why, I have a full profile, many friends, many other URLs not just mine but still not a single soul to my site.
2- Stumble Upon will send you hundreds sometimes thousands of visitors with just one click. However the traffic is very poor in click and purchase mindset. It’s more hit and run still good to get better ranks, spread your word and to have a better Alexa rank.
3- Digg, Reddit and ALL other sites ARE NOT WORTH the duty. Even if you export your delicious list with all your bookmarks and import to all other sites so they have all your pages submited well they still send you zero users.
Well only one thing is left to be said: It’s much better to publish, hit SU button and start working immediately on your next article.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I like the way you offer so much info to get more traffic to reading ones article. I am struggling to survive and write about things that I feel are important, as well as look for work and other things that I can do on the computer to make a few buck or win a few prizes.
Its rough out there.
But thank you for all you efforts it is appreciated here.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:55 am
That was a very good eye opener. I agree that spending too much time on sending urls to different sites may not pay off. Thanks for sharing.